Routs the blockbusters
Girls, SpongeBob, and Frozen openly cater to families and children, which may build an audience for future adult fare but for now crowds it out. Worse, “the dramatic landscape may be even more dire.” Though Harry Potter and the Cursed Child benefits from its “endlessly imaginative” staging, it’s “easier to defend as a galvanizing dramatic event than as a model of playwriting.” It won because few great plays ever reach Broadway when producers can’t afford to make huge bets even on shows that wow theater fans who visit smaller stages. At least Broadway revivals had a fine year—highlighted by winners Angels in America and Once on This Island, but also by My Fair Lady, Carousel, and Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women.
Even so, Robert De Niro almost stole the show, said Mike Hale in The New York Times. Tapped to introduce a song performed by Broadway newcomer Bruce Springsteen, De Niro delivered a short, obscene salvo against Donald Trump that was censored on TV but triggered a standing ovation and a social media storm. Other participants addressed the nation’s fraught politics with “a surprising amount of subtlety,” said Daniel D’Addario in Variety. In a particular moving moment, Parkland, Fla.’s high school drama club, whose members survived a mass shooting in February, took the stage to perform “Seasons of Love” from Rent. In a year when the Tonys could easily have been as belligerent in spirit as De Niro, “the show’s heart was big beyond measure.”